One word? When seven would do…

We were supposed to be having a day out with my Mum today to celebrate her birthday yesterday. She’d clearly been doing research and came round last night with a list of several ideas of things to do including a day at the very nice soft play over at Ford that we’ve not been to for well over a year due to the cost of it, and a trip to the Sea Life Centre at Brighton.

She rang about 930am to ask what arrangements if any we’d made last night as she couldn’t remember anything much after having the takeaway including how they got home 😆 and was feeling very wobbly. We agreed to meet an hour later than planned and she rang back an hour later to say she really wasn’t feeling at all well and had just been ill. I was torn between feeling sorry for her at feeling crap and feeling very amused about her hangover 😆 Unsure as to whether she would make a recovery for later in the day or not we decided to amuse ourselves around the house and made a big vat of popcorn and settled down to watch Happy Feet, which I’d brought home from work yesterday. It didn’t hold any of us, Scarlett sat playing with beads, I sat reading Billie Piper’s autobiography and Davies sat strewn across me with my laptop playing logic games. It was nice though :).

Mum eventually rang back around 2pm to say she had been back to bed and was now feeling fragile but able to leave the house. I needed various bits from the supermarket and had to go and get her to bring her back here to collect her car anyway as they’d got a cab home last night, so we popped over to pick her up and she came to Tescos with us. It was a really busy Friday afternoon in there but the children were really well behaved so it was not stressful. We got picked on to go into their market research kitchen bit to do some food tasting surveys. We’ve done that several times before – don’t know how many of their stores they have it in but there is a big kitchen area with seating where they carry out market research on things. In the past I’ve done about 5 or 6 tests on various products. Today it was chicken tikka masala jar sauces. Which was fine for me, but not so good for Mum’s delicate state, particularly as she’d had that in her takeaway last night :lol:. The children refused to try any but were spoilt with little pots of sweets, biscuits and drinks while we did our taste testing and then carried on with our shopping. The time was on the cusp of not quite tea time but nearly so we dropped the shopping back to the car and then went round M&S which is on the same site. They were doing lots of odd live demonstrations of things like giant snakes and ladders and volleyball net games while dressed up in M&S clothing ensembles and promoting their school uniform on 3 for 2, so the children got embroiled in a game of giant snakes and ladders and presented with a balloon each about school uniform, which tickled all of us and then Scarlett helped Mum on her quest for red shoes, smart, with a small heel and proved to be a very diligent personal shopper amusing the other shoppers by picking shoes up, considering them deeply and then putting them down as they were ‘not smart enough’ or ‘the heel is too flat’. 😆

Having killed enough time in M&S we went to McDonalds, also on the same site and bought the kids a Happy Meal each for their tea. Mum had a coffee which made her turn green again and go very quiet so once the children had finished eating we came home. Mum and I chatted while Davies and Scarlett played with various free gifts from when we subscribed to Horrible Science including putting a poster about inventions and discoveries up on the wall which I’ve promised to look at with them tomorrow. Ady came home, Mum left, Ady and the children went in the garden for a while whilst I did the Home Ed consultation thingy online.

Not quite the day we’d planned but nice enough nonetheless. Tomorrow I’m working in the afternoon and Ady has several visits to the tip planned to get rid of the garden rubbish he’s created in digging up our front bit of garden to make more lawn.

BBC news story about pupils getting lessons in respect.

All has not been well of late. No real idea why, I’ve sat and explored why I’ve not been feeling right for ages and not been able to come up with anything. I know I was utterly exhausted by life in general and really felt like I needed a holiday, I know I didn’t feel like I’d had anything remotely resembling one and I know I came away feeling like I’d failed on several counts (organisational, wife and mother, perpetual good humour, able to get a good bargain of a tent on ebay that actually worked, able to deal with confrontations properly and without resorting to threatening physical violence, you know, those sorts of things 😉 ). We came back and the rain continued, there was the dead chicken saga,hormones and the start of a cold, an afternoon of training at work which utterly failed to set me alight and made me question my long term career plans and a whole lot of internal debating with myself about education generally. In short lots of questionning lots of things but still unable to put my finger right on what was giving me that feeling of general unease that I was feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s very rare that I poke at myself and discover anything other than basic contentment, sure there are always day to day things to fret or rant about but in the main I enjoy being happy and that’s what I am most of the time.

Yesterday I went back to work and during the day the foggy feeling lifted. Ady was home with the children so they were happy, all my workmates were friendly, had been following the weather reports for where we were camping and talking about it while we were away. They had even been debating whether we’d stick it out or come home (and had all decided I was a stick it out sort of girl :)), all loved my hair and kept saying how nice it looked. The younger girl who works practically full time and has been trying to get another job ever since I started there finally got a phonecall to offer her one so she handed in her notice and although she knew I wouldn’t be able to accept it, my boss immediately and seriously offered me a full time job. I came home with a big pile of music Ady had wanted, films the children had wanted and books for me which had Ady and the children enthusing about the perks of my job.

I made three chocolate cakes to sandwich together with strawberries and cream whipped with cocoa and sugar creating a very lovely tripled chocolate birthday cake which we ate still warm. My Granny, Mum, Dad and Frazer arrived and for once there were no tensions, everyone was relaxed and happy. We had cake, the children made us all laugh, Granny left and we got an indian takeaway for dinner. The children stayed up til about 10pm so they went straight to sleep when we eventually sent them to bed, we all drank lots, there was much hilarious banter about whether Frazer’s black wool Versace garment was a cardigan or not and they all left at a fairly decent hour.

In short I had a really nice day, surrounded by people I like and love, busy doing things I enjoy (working to earn money, baking to applause, laughing) and I’ve woken up this morning feeling back to normal; happy, content and ready for what life throws at me next. This is good 🙂

My Mum on the other hand has woken feeling very much the worse for wear for what was for her an unusal amount of drinking and has had to retire back to bed which probably means that our day out isn’t going to happen. Which is a great shame, but I guess the morning after your 60th birthday probably deserves a hangover. 🙂

I’m all too drunken (very good evening celebrating my Mum’s birthday 🙂 ) to blog properly but have had emails from YHA.

Okehampton is not available for the dates we want so I have a list of other hostels which are. Who is interested in coming to a NicCamp for Monday 5th – Friday 9th November 2007. I need to know possible interested numbers so I can work out which hostels would suit us please 🙂

Ady and the children had a cold the week before we went camping. I was convinced I would not get it by the power of positive thinking alone and having been cold free for two weeks after they recovered I thought I’d got away with it but yesterday I started to feel a bit ‘coldy’ and today I am definitely suffering. I don’t feel dreadful, just generally low with it. Fortunately what I need is something to look forward to and be cheery about and we have plenty of things coming up for the rest of this month to anticipate with good cheer so I’m sure it won’t be long before I am back to myself again. Crap camping, dead chickens and germs aside 😆

This morning we had various things to do including going to get birthday gifts for my Mum who turns 60 tomorrow, cat food, rat poison and new toilet seats for both loos which have broken at the same time – lovely shopping list eh?! 😆 We started in Sainsburys where both children clambered in the trolley which was one of those basket on wheels type affairs. They started holding on to a side each while I guided it round but ended up sitting inside it which meant there was very little room for stuff I actually wanted to buy but did mean it was easier to navigate round the aisles without a child in each hand and a trolley to push. About halfway round they were making sound effects of the trolley stopping and starting and going round corners which reminded me of that Honda ad with the voices making the soundtrack, which I’d showed Davies a video of and the making of a while back so we talked about that and then they did that the rest of the way round, making rain on windscreen sound effects and everything. 🙂

We had a quick walk round Boots looking for potential birthday gifts but found none and then walked round to the pet shop to get cat food. It’s one of those big superstore Pets at Home places which we’ve been into loads of times so as the tills are near the door I went off to get the food while D&S went off to look at the animals and I just called them when I’d paid. I’m really feeling like I have older children this last few weeks, it’s nice :). We were supposed to go to B&Q for loo seats but as I pulled into the car park I realised it is Wednesday which is 10% off for over 60s day and the place was already teeming with mature shoppers so metally scared from working on the tills on Wednesdays for years way back and hating every minute of Wednesdays I decided not to bother and to subject us to another 24 hours of hovering over the loo instead of sitting down. But let’s face it we lived in a field last week, toilets that flush waste away rather than into a seperate bit of the container are still a luxury around here this week. 😆

We got home and Ady rang to say he was coming home for lunch and did we want to go off with him for the afternoon? We’d have loved to but already had plans with Lucy and The Rs so he came home for lunch and then headed back off again. D&S built a house for the dinosaurs out of foam blocks and then played outside for a bit. Lucy and The Rs came round. There were various games including Beauty Salons with hairdressing, painting of nails and applications of eyeshadow, some potion making in Scarlett’s bedroom, Davies put on a show using the toy animals and Lucy and I chatted. Lucy then popped out for an hour to have teeth removed at the dentists while I sat and supervised the continued play. It’s not the first time Rebecca has stayed here without Lucy and she was fine, but it was Richard’s first time of any length and he had a minor wobble towards the end but recovered quickly enough, particularly when noone seemed to panic too much when he did start to wail a bit so he seemed to realise it probably wasn’t worth peristing with it :lol:. Lucy came back, Scarlett and Rebecca carried on playing, sometimes including Richard and Davies sat playing logic puzzles on my laptop. He’s pretty good at that sort of lateral thinking on games when you need to think several steps ahead, definitely not the impulsive type.

Lucy and The Rs left, I cooked the children some tea having helped them tidy up and then went out to do some chick maintenance. I’m a bit better disposed towards chickens again today. I am still fairly morbidly convinced that the remaining four are all cockerels but prepared to wait for first crows before shipping them out as long as we don’t lose any more of them before that. Ady was not going to be home quite in time to leave Scarlett with him and take Davies to Badgers so we all went and arrived at the same time as the Badger leader who left 3 weeks ago on maternity leave coming to show the Badgers her 12 day old new baby daughter. 🙂 Had a quick coo at her and saw Davies in before Ady arrived to take Tarly home again leaving me to sit in the car for a lovely hour or so reading my book and eating humbugs. 🙂 When I went in to collect Davies I heard that she had had a fairly crappy birth experience with epidural, ventouse, forceps and episiotomy from which she was still suffering pain. Poor woman 🙁 She looked very happy though so I’m sure her new baby – Alice – is proving worth it. Davies was very interested to know what all the different words being bandied about were so I explained some infront of the Badger leader telling me and then spent the car journey home explaining the rest. So now he knows where your perineum is and why I was dreading episiotomy more than anything else in labour. One day he’ll make a very sympathetic birth partner I’m sure :lol:.

Back to work for me tomorrow, but Ady’s working from home which has all sorts of plusses, not least coming home to a tidy house and already fed their tea children at the end of the day unlike when Dad is here of an afternoon. We’ve got Mum, Dad and Frazer coming over for a takeaway to celebrate her birthday in the evening and although I have got all the camping laundry washed and dried it is currently in three huge towers waiting to be put away so I doubt I’ll be around much tomorrow aside from perhaps in my lunch break from work.

I came out as a Leader

Just realised I hadn’t blogged yesterday before blogging this morning. I’d meant to do it first thing and of course other things sort of got in the way.

Let me cast my mind back all those hours ago… ah yes. We all woke late (well the three of us not expected back at work first thing anyway!) – kids are still on camp time, which for once means as well as going to sleep late in the evening they are waking late in the morning too. I’m a bit torn about this really, I don’t actually have any issues with them going to sleep late if they are getting enough sleep – they are in their rooms by about 8pm and tend to either play or look at books fairly quietly in their beds until they fall asleep. I used to fret about this when they were still waking at 6am and then looking like zombies with great big shadows under their eyes and getting really tired and emotional during the middle of the day. But at leasts 4 people commented to me last week that Davies didn’t have his normal ‘camp look’ going on (twitches, purple shadows under his eyes, great holllows in his cheeks etc.) and they both did really well going to SKC, coming back and flaking out pretty much straight away for a good 10 or 11 hours. But it does feel a bit slack somehow – languishing in bed long after other kids their age have been sat at school desks for an hour. I can’t decide whether it is sensible to let them keep their own hours, particularly when they also suit me or if I should impose a new regime of being up and dressed with shoes on and sink scrubbed by 8am prompt flylady stylee for home schoolers. 😆

Anyway, we all woke late, breakfasted late and then got ready and went into town. I needed to move money about between bank accounts and also really desired a small bit of retail therapy, which I got in New Look with a couple of very bargainous bits for myself which thanks to A’s bonus we can afford this month and after a rough couple of weeks without the relaxing holiday I’d felt I needed before I even got there, let alone the actual holiday I had once I was there I felt quite justified in the little buzz from trying on clothes which looked nice and then buying them. Home for lunch and then I got changed, Dad arrived to look after D&S and I headed back out into town again for a training session at Worthing library.

It was quite interesting, all about using the library’s cataloguing system and searching for things but it was run by a man who was clearly bored by it himself so it felt tedious and the 3 hours dragged. Home again for a crazy fast turnaround of getting Davies fed, changed into Beaver outfit and turning the house upside down to find the bit of paper about where Beavers were meeting for a Worthing Pier visit before Ady arrived home to whisk him off to go to it. They wanted adults helpers and as both Ady and I have been CRB checked I have Davies the option of which of us he wanted to go along and he chose Ady. They had an interesting, if rather windswept and chilly time looking at all the life saving coastguard stuff on the seafront, looking at wind and other seaside weather conditions, checking out the tide timetables and doing various sea safety type stuff. Ady said it was pretty good. 🙂

Scarlett had the choice of what she wanted to do and she asked for a bath followed by stories, so that’s what she got. The children more often than not share a bath and generally would stay in it for hours if I let them playing, but they sometimes ask for solo baths and after a week in a field I could relate to her wanting one (I hasten to add she has had at least two baths since coming home already, this was not her first! :lol:). Then she got into her pjs and we read some stories together til Davies and Ady came home.

This morning was taken up with chicken related dramas and when we’d finally sorted all that out we got out some Tesco experiments kits I’d picked up at the weekend. We did one on optical illusions and one on things to do with compasses. We didn’t get very far with the compass one as it had a weather vane and a sundial kit, neither of which I wanted to start doing today but the optical illusion one was pretty good. We looked at some balancing things and some colour mixing things with them both coming up with intelligent, considered comments and ideas so that was good. I’ve been doing lots of thinking about educational provision since coming back from camp and may well blog about it when I have more sitting down infront of a computer time, but actually the doing the experiments came from them – I bought the kits cos they looked interesting and were £1.97 each but they found them and brought them to me.

We had lunch and then Lucy and the Rs came round for a couple of hours. I was really proud of Davies, he managed to leave Scarlett and Rebeccas to play and said to me that sometimes he pretends to plug in one of his x box controllers and lets Richard hold it and think he is playing with him so he did that. He coaxed Richard off Lucy’s lap and down onto the floor, sat and chatted to him about the x box game and when Richard tired of that he went and got the big box of cars in for them to play with and sat talking to Richard and categorising all the cars into rows of fire engines, police cars, etc. He was just really good with him, with loads of patience and time, which given his own traumatic morning was all the more commendable I thought. Hurrah for Davies! 🙂

Scarlett and Rebecca mostly disappeared off to play although they were times all the children were in the lounge and times they were all off playing together. I think Lucy and I managed to catch up on all the things we’d not said to each other all last week – and of course good to hear the take on things from three tents down ;).

They left, the kids had tea, Ady came home, I started to slump after a fairly wobbly day having also started to come to terms with the fact that I’m now thinking all four remaining chicks are cockerels and actually having started to lose interest in chickens altogether. 🙁 I cooked tea, drank wine and am now feeling better again :). We’ve decided that if we lose another chick then the whole lot get shipped off to a farmer to do as he will with them. If they survive – and they should, we’ve really barricaded them in tonight – then we’ll keep them til the food we bought at the weekend runs out which should be another 2-3 weeks in which case we’ll know for sure if they are cocks or hens and it would be nice to keep them long enough to hear the first crow. I still like the idea of keeping a couple of hens but am resigned to the idea that it is not the right time just now for all sorts of reasons and if we have ended up with four cockerels then it clearly wasn’t meant to be just now. Joyce, we’d NEVER seen rats round here before although I have to assume they were here but the chicks must be making them bolder or something. I’ve seen two and the next door neighbour reported seeing one to my dad so clearly they are being attracted here by the chicks whereas maybe they’d just pass through otherwise. From looking at chicken forums they just seem to go together no matter what you do (another reason chicken keeping is looking less attractive). I think what’s most upsetting is that I heard it all happen last night and that it was that particular one who I had sort of championed from hatch-point.

Decided that all my brave talk about self sufficiency lifestyles would involve more that the odd dead bird to deal with so I plucked (boom, boom!) up the courage to go and sort it all out. The kids were adamant they wanted to see so having checked it was not a total bloodbath (and as they could see everything out of the lounge window and were trying so my only other option was to lock them in their bedrooms (which would have neccessitated installing locks on their bedrooms first anyway!) I let them. I warned them it was not pretty but in the same was as seeing Malice’s body was good closure for them I thought this would be the right thing to do.

Scarlett was morbidly interested and remains very unemotional about the whole thing. Davies looked, asked a few questions and retired to his room for a while to compose himself. We’ve looked at the pictures of Feathers from hatch point to this weekend and he’s ok again now. In the same way as they dealt with Malice by talking about it a lot and still including her as one of our pets even a year on I imagine there will be much talk of Feathers for a while to come. Let’s hope it isn’t the start of the ritual picking off of all of them one by one though…

I put the body in 3 carrier bags and it’s to one side for Ady to deal with – the kids want to bury it. I scrubbed out all the coop and the others are all back in there again. I think I’ve made it a bit more predator-proof too now, hope so.

And the whole eat it or not eat dilemma is out of my hands – there was nothing left of Feathers except it’s feathers…

Last night Ady and I sat reminising on our Tour Of The North this time last year, tainted by the loss of Malice before we went and the subsequent finding of Malice while we were away, followed by the long and drawn out but probably quite inevitable death of Malice a month or so later. Seems July simply ain’t a good month for Goddard animals.

Last night around midnight there was something of a commotion in the chicken house. A load of flapping, thudding and cheeping. It was pretty much over before I’d really registered what it was and I debated going out with a torch to see but it was pouring with rain, howling with wind and as the noise had stopped I decided at best I’d find nothing other than some chicks having a bit of a party and at worst would be confronted with unpleasant sights just before bedtime so it could wait til this morning.

I’m sort of glad I made that decision as I imagine I would have slept worse if I’d seen and had to try and deal with what I’ve just found in the dark last night. I opened the little door for them to come out, having heard various cheeping but contented type noises as I approached the coop. One chicken came out, two, three, four. Ah. I came back in the house and tried to decide what to do before summoning up the courage to go and lift the side of the coop to investigate. One dead chicken (Feathers) greeted me. As the children were sitting in the lounge likely to look out the window at any moment I shut the lid again quick and came back in. Having rung Ady to ascertain he is not able to come home and deal with it and rung my Dad to find no reply I’ve dealt with the telling the children bit but am still trying to work out whether I am able to deal with the rest of it, I need something to put it in, somewhere to put it and to decide whether we want to look at the body or not before I lift the lid again. Also need to try and work out what happened and how to prevent it happening again.

I’m pretty sure it was a rat attack, we’ve seen a couple in the garden since we got the chicks and there are enough smallish gaps around the coop for one to sneak in but I’d thought the chicks were big enough now to be a match for a rat. There is no way a fox could have got in and I assume a fox would have picked off more than one chick anyway, but I guess the other four are pretty vulnerable now and I need to sort something out to ensure we don’t have a pile of corpses by this afternoon.

The children were very philosophical, no tears, just lots of reasoning that as Feathers was the weakest he wouldn’t have been able to get away from whatever it was that got in there. They decided it was very sad but as I started my chat with ‘I have something very sad to tell you but it is one of the downsides of having animals…’ they were pretty OK about it. I imagine we’ll have loads of references to it and possibly some tears later in the day.

It’s currently still pouring with rain which might well seem a fitting way to be dealing with dead creatures (I always think it is somehow ‘right’ when it rains at funerals) but I’ve about had my fill of unpleasant deeds in the rain this last week or so, so I’ll reserve the right to hang on until the rain stops before going out and dealing with it.

Swimming lesson for Davies this morning. He only managed two swimming sessions last week despite good intentions on our part for daily swimming but did really well at showing no fear and being really very happy underwater. He can do a semblence of swimming doggy paddle style but can get around and doesn’t sink. Today he happily jumped into the pool and while he doesn’t do great at listening to the instructor (way too busy chatting to the children next to him :roll:) he does put 100% effort in. I really hope Scarlett’s name comes to the top of the waiting list soon after she turns five as I think they will very likely be in the same lesson if so and them learning together would be good for them both.

The weather was doing what it’s been doing for the last week or so and raining, greyly, but we decided to drive to our usual car boot sale haunt for a while anyway, only to find it was closed ‘due to bad weather’, as was the next one we drove to aswell. We needed more chick food anyway which is next door to that venue so we got some of that while we were there and then I phoned my parents to arrange to go over there for lunch. We popped home for a while before heading over to them.

We had a nice couple of hours, with us showing them the pictures of the week. Dad was on bad form, doing lots of teasing and loaded comments but I managed not to rise to the bait and after 3 hours we came home on the basis that the weather had changed and I could try and get some washing done and dry. Four loads are currently out on the line with a fifth languishing in the machine ready to be pegged out and a further six or so loads ready sorted to go in the machine. I’ve washed all the really muddy stuff, it’s mostly the smoke scented stuff and things like fleeces to go now. Hopefully we’ll have a nice-ish day tomorrow so I can get it all dry, otherwise I sense a trip to the launderette to tumble dry it all coming on before we all run out of clothes.

Once home the children played in the garden, Ady did some clearing of the triangle infront of our house which has been planted up with shrubs for years but we’ve decided to give back to lawn while I did lots of internetting :). I cooked the childrens’ tea, they went to bed and Ady cooked a roast dinner. We took some pictures of the chicks and let them free range for a while. Still no idea what they are, the pictures show their combs and wattles as far redder than they are in real life which was what prompted someone on my US forum to suggest they were roos last time I posted, but as I noticed at least one of them was starting to develop a cluck rather than a cheep I’m guessing it won’t be too much longer before we hear our first crow. The children loved them being out and free and both spent ages talking to them and picking them up. Ady now has it in his head he will slaughter any cockerels for is to eat so I am ever more desperate for them to be hens :lol:.

Tomorrow Ady returns to work, as do I, with a training session in the afternoon, followed by Davies’ Beavers session in the evening, so back to life with a thud. I’ve been in touch with YHA about Okehampton in November for the next NicCamps – if anyone is up for it and not already on the NicCamps yahoo list shout and I’ll send you an invite. 🙂

One afternoon of sunshine and two nights in a proper bed in a house with a bath and I’m already hankering after camping again. Clearly my short term memory isn’t up to much as I’ve already forgotten the smell of the field, the feeling of having all my toes stuck together with caked on mud and the challenge that was walking across the field to the toilets without falling in yet another puddle :).

Curiously not the first time I’ve used that as a post title – must go and check what the previous one was, bet it was a Home Ed camp of some sort :).

Saturday morning I went off to work while Ady did splendid work keeping Davies and Scarlett’s excitement slightly under fever pitch (well he hadn’t felt the need to strap them to their beds or anything so I assume he managed to do so 😉 ). They picked me up at 1pm from work, having come in to choose a selection of dvds to take to watch on the journey which meant their excited chatter spilt into the library for the last 10 minutes of my shift. The journey was ok – we went through pretty much all sorts of weather conditions on the way including bright sunshine and torrential rain. Scarlett slept for a lot of the journey with Davies almost constantly eating the variety of snack food we’d packed. We arrived about 430pm whereupon it began to drizzle with rain and I had an almost immediate hissy fit about not being able to camp next to *my friends*, which was all speedily remedied by Colin moving his car so we could pitch in the dip between them and Merry, the rain clearing up and James coming over with beer :).

We did pitch the tent. Then we re-pitched the tent. Then it rained, ever such a lot and we took shelter in Kirsty and James’ tent (and drank more beer) and then Kirsty took me to Morrisons to get food supplies. Then I had another hissy fit about the tent still not being pitched right (are you starting to notice a pattern? ;)) and while Ady sat in the car with the children I tried to re-pitch it again in the pouring, driving rain. The problem seems to be a combination of a cheap tent with design fault in it’s tautness and very probably being a single season tent coupled with a very wonky pitch on very uneven ground. Once the rain had stopped a small crowd of far more knowledgable and experienced campers gathered with an eventual verdict of it not being remotely suitable for camping, in that field, in that weather, for that night. I was steadfastly refusing to believe this at all but the point when I waved Ady goodbye while Chris was blowing up my airbed and making up bedding for me in his and Alison’s tent while my clothes were being stowed in Lucy and Colin’s tent and my food was remaining in Kirsty and James’ car boot was a particular low point where I was torn between feeling immense gratitude towards all my lovely friends and the almost overwhelming urge to sit in the middle of a puddle and cry my eyes out. Thankfully the moment passed when my joke to Chris about my airbed having a puncture to top it all off was proved prophetic and we had to dig out the single spare airbed we’d brought along. 🙄 Fairly shortly afterwards I realised Ady had gone off with my make up too. Call me shallow, call me vain, but I really struggle without my eyeliner and mascara, not to mention my concealer for that big spot brewing under my nose that could probably be seen from space.

However, a lovely evening was had, Chris sat with D&S which enabled me to drink and catch up with friends in Steve and Sarah’s awning followed by a few of us sitting in the marquee for a while and aside from a 2am need to wee (I did it in the dark behind the tent :oops:) I slept well.

Sunday – I had slept in yesterdays contact lenses and then very VERY foolishly took them out before heading over to the shower having realised just as I screwed them up and threw them in the field next to the tent that my contact lenses were in the same bag as my make up. Oh and my glasses. This meant I did wonders for the political correctness of the camping field ticking off back homeless and disabled as without some assistance I am ridiculously shortsighted even struggling to distinguish between my own and other peoples’ children from any more than about 2 foot away. It was still raining and by now I was quite enjoying kidding myself that the fact I couldn’t see anyone meant they couldn’t see me (without make up and with big spot) either. Davies had his first taste of independance going to visit a friend in the statics while Scarlett played with Eve and Rei and I sat in Em’s tent drinking copious volumes of tea and eating bombay mix while picking out the lentils :lol:.

Ady arrived with the only suitable tent in our collection of 3 (one borrowed, one paid for, one still in the ether of delivered in error and not yet collected) which Em helped us pitch (while it rained a bit more) and suddenly the world seemed a much better place. We set up our gazebo infront of the tent and with our camp kitchen and wind break it all looked like a proper little temporary home for the week. I was introduced to the ‘joy’ of Sparkys Krew Club and very quickly decided that if nothing else came good that week I would come home with a medal 😆 There was a gathering of people outside our tent when I got back from Sparkys, where Ady was cooking a lovely curry which was ready just as another downpour started so everyone scattered and we ate in our tent. Merry appeared with a bottle but no bottle opener and while we were trying to work that one out Bob and Katy arrived in the dark in the pouring rain. We attempted to put up some pup tents to accomodate them (there were times this week when I was mightily disappointed in myself but other times when I was quite proud of myself, this was one of the latter – time was when I would have sat in a car wailing faced with wind, rain, dark and tents to errect, but not only did I have a headtorch of my very own, I knew which pole was supposed to go where and everything 🙂 ). It didn’t work so once we’d installed them in Merry’s cavernous tent and done some repair work to the marquee we decamped to Chris and Helen’s tent with Alison for more wine, crisps and chatting.

Monday morning Scarlett woke around 5am wailing. I’d been awake for some time with the knowledge that one corner of the tent over the kids’ bedroom pod was flapping (no idea how I knew this, I just did, and I was right 🙂 ) and had been debating getting up to fix it. I got up and moved Scarlett into our bedroom and unzipped the tent to go and sort the corner out to be faced with a faceful of white gazebo roof. I decided this was a sign that I shouldn’t go out and deal with it so sent Ady instead. He never came back, taking the opportunity to dismantle the gazebo, move the kitchen to the side of the tent and go and have a shower while I snuggled up next to Scarlett and went back to sleep. I start to lose track of the days at this point but I know it was Em’s Samba workshop in the morning which was utterly fab. I really wanted to join in but neither of the children were up for it at the time so I didn’t. Davies joined in late though and the water bottle drums echoed round the field at various points for the rest of the week. Ady and Davies went swimming in the afternoon while I sat infront of our tent with the henna out ready for painting. No one arrived but I enjoyed sitting with my feet in a bucket of water for an hour or so, which did wonders both for thawing them out and cleaning some of the ingrained mud off them. My toe was properly diagnosed as broken so I felt justified in the fuss I’ve been making about it and Scarlett soaked her feet alongside mine. More Sparkys in the evening and I think that was the night that Davies won a medal up there while my quest went unfulfilled. More sitting round our tent that night and eating a very nice spaghetti bolognaise that Ady had cooked.

Tuesday – I think that was the day of all the tent moving. By now, three solid days of rain had marked the field into ‘crap for tenting’ and ‘utterly impossible for tenting’. I’d fallen over 3 times and was on my last pair of clean trousers (the first and second time was with good humour, the third time involved a lot of swearing!) so we moved various tents to better areas within the fields. I think this was also the day Merry, Helen and I went to complain and the day we all went swimming. I could be wrong :lol:. It was definitely the day my patience ran out with a certain child and their parent and I did a spot of behaving for which I am certainly not proud, but probably not particularly ashamed of either. I’m pretty sure this was also the day we had a really pleasant evening outside The Beans tent which was sullied by some complaining about noise levels. Yup, I’m pretty sure this was the day my utter sense of humour bypass was carried out, in a muddy field, with rusty instruments. We did do some tie dyeing which was great, and Scarlett and I did some scoobie and beads stuff in the seasiders room. We ended up leaving the site for teatime and having a KFC in the car followed by a quick run round on Lowestoft beach in a short break in the rain. Back for Sparkys and the karaoke competion, won by Anna.

Wednesday – Africa Alive! I like Africa Alive! I like the fact that all the staff seem to work there because they are genuinely passionate about animals and that any money made seems to be ploughed back into yet another developement for the animals. I like the enclosures which seem far more about being nice for the animals than good for showing them off, I like the fact you can get *really* close to lions, giraffes, zebras etc. and I quite like the train too. Unfortunately Davies and Scarlett were at Day Five Of Home Ed Camp phase by then so were more interested in the ducks and the slide than the wild creatures of Africa we’d spent over 20 quid for them to come and ogle, they were both tired and wanted to cuddle with their heads in our laps during the train ride instead of look at the animals and I spent most of the train ride either on the phone to Merry or Em trying to sort out the payment to Africa Alive! We hopped off and pretty much got that sorted (although I know Merry would have managed to sort it perfectly well without me 🙂 ) and then went into our Discovery Session. That was excellent actually, true it was the same animals we’ve petted for the last 3 years – Davies made me laugh when he told the woman that he’d stroked Charlie the cockroach when we came last year and she said ‘shall I let you into a secret? We’ve got a whole tankfull of Charlies in the back!’ 😆 We had a late picnic lunch, chatted to Ali, J and Freya and then went for a final look at the lions, during which I had a phonecall from a friend for nearly an hour which went all the way back to the car, through the gift shop and most of the way back to Morrisons. We went for our final trip to Sparkys where I managed to achieve my weeks ambition of winning a medal for adult achievement. Justice was finally served and it was almost worth the endless dances to The Macarena and the truly dreadful costume character show to win it ;).

Thursday we’d decided was to be our last full day. I’d been due to do a pebble painting craft in the afternoon but having gained use of a room off reception for our activities we’d decided that the Caberet Evening should be pulled forward to a Caberet Afternoon instead, plus I was rather reluctant to be doling out paint to small children in a carpeted room as opposed to the sunny field I’d anticipated. Having decided that I’d allowed the first day / night crisis of canvas, the weather and the camp wankers to interfere way too much with the holiday I’d anticipated having with my family and friends we buggered off out for lunch and some time on Lowestoft beach. It was cold, but it wasn’t raining. Ady and I managed to chat about various things which had been pissing us off all week and we returned to the campsite ready for a caberet followed by a nice last evening. Caberet was good, as per last year. Davies did the inbetween bit but having been keyed up for bigger build ups at home he wasn’t on top form and just introduced acts. He and Scarlett had a proper turn planned but despite getting changed Scarlett developed total stage fright. I offered Davies the chance of doing nothing, something alternative or whatever he wanted. He ended up taking his keyboard up to the stage and doing a sort of medley of the demo tracks on it. He was very disappointed that Scarlett hadn’t don their act and if I’d have fitted in her tutu I’d have done it with him instead, but he dealt with it really well. The sun shone, having already got my medal I had no need to go to Sparky’s, the children were finally doing the running around the field playing in a big group thing they’d all come along to do, Ady cooked a lovely dinner of steak sandwich and chips (on a camping stove, the man is a genuis 🙂 ) and Doug made fire! It was a really nice evening ending with just a couple of us left round the fire talking nonsense until way past 3am.

Friday – After another 5am waking Scarlett ended up in bed with me. Ady gave up and went to sleep in the car and none of us woke until nearly 10am. We packed up very s l o w l y finally getting going around 130pm. It was Wallace and Gromit’s Wrong Trousers Day which I’d planned to do an event for but had just completely run out of patience, energy and enthusiasm for anything other than a bath and a bed by that point so we headed for home. We took a fair old while to get home, stopping at Tescos in Ipswich for (very late) lunch and then again at Dartford Costco to renew our annual membership, get some photos developed and drink tea. We finally reached home around 745pm. Davies and Scarlett had a bath while Ady unloaded the car. I scrubbed them with a nail brush but they still have ground in dirt, as have I. 😆 They went to bed, I popped out for some basic food supplies and we finally ate dinner around midnight having both had baths too.

Saturday – A slow start this morning with Ady doing stuff for the chickens while I flickr’d. Then we had to get my car taxed at the post office, drop Ali’s laptop back to her (we provided door to static delivery service :lol:) and do our months food shopping at the supermarket and the butcher. Home in time to watch last weeks’ Doctor Who and then get ready for bed before tonights.

I woke to the surprise news that it is mooncup time, which means it is just as well we’d come home yesterday as I was not at all prepared for that at camp either. Makes me wonder whether peroids are brought on by PMT symptoms or PMT symptoms are because you are about to come on really 😆

There are loads of pictures on flickr and having now blogged and looked at my own and others photos I am coming to the conclusion that it was actually not just a week I endured but one I enjoyed too. I am very glad it was not my first experience of tenting, I’m very sorry I didn’t manage to lay on any of the activities I’d planned, I met some new people I liked a lot, some I didn’t like at all, some I’m reserving judgement on and some I never actually identified at all. I came to the week with some expectations which were quite spectacularly not met and I think my crown of eternal optimism slipped rather a lot, but overall the children enjoyed it, the evenings were lovely, once again friends rallied round to help out in tricky times and whilst I’m not sorry to think I’ll never see Kessingland beach again it was overall a good week. Oh, and did I mention I won a medal? 😉

I’m disinclined to post today really cos I’ve been very short tempered and annoyed most of the day (one of those where the childrens’ noise levels and my own shrieking have made me very glad we live in a detached house, otherwise I’d be expecting social services round any moment to do a nighttime raid and remove the poor poor children from my inexpert and rubbish care).

But we’re packed and ready to go 🙂

First thing we did some watching Class TV – they really enjoy it actually, it is very varied and often sparks all sorts of interesting conversations, plus I get to go on a nostalgia trip about sitting cross legged aged 8 in the TV room at school in the dark watching that clock tick round before the programme started and edging closer to Stuart Smith while no one was watching 😉 Oh how I wanted to grow up and marry Stuart Smith when I was 8 😆

Then we whizzed over to drop some plants off and collect some vegan foodstuff from Ali to take to Kessingland to make their load on public transport a little lighter (see I can be lovely ;)) and called into Asda to get last minute bits and snacks for the car tomorrow.

We came home for lunch and while I tried to do various online bits and pieces the children practised their ‘turn’ for Kessingland, honing it into something a little more polished and slightly briefer once I pointed out that other children would also be wanting to entertain us and it was only one night 😆 I still can’t quite believe that they are going to get up and do it, particularly Scarlett as there was no way I had that confidence as a child, but Davies stood at the front last year and did warming up to the point that he wants to compere it this year (and has lots of cheesey lines prepared in the style of a host :lol:) and Scarlett packed the two outfits she needs for her part in a little musical theatre they have planned, which has a storyline and everything so we’ll see :). I spent ages procrastinating before finally getting going and assembling all the stuff we’re taking which wasn’t already in the garage into the playroom. We have a stacking crate each of clothes (mine is the fullest :oops:) and it is all now finally in the car thanks to Ady.

The children were packed off to bed before 7pm, partially for their own wellbeing as my final shred of patience ran out around 3pm, I took to the bath with a large glass of wine while Ady was being a ‘representative of management’ at a company barbecue held to mark the end of the season to thank all their foreign workers. He got home around 830pm to find both children still awake and Davies now told that he is definitely not coming on holiday with us – might have to retract that in the morning ;). The car is now loaded up, pizza is waiting to go in the oven as soon as Ady gets in the bath (he’s still faffing around packing Pompey tops) and I am sufficiently inebriated to feel no pain. 🙂

I’m working in the morning (it should have been the afternoon but I’ve managed to swap shifts) and we’re leaving straight after work so I’ll not be online any more after tonight. Really looking forward to a relaxing week, hoping sufficient organisation has been done in advance to mean there are no traumas while we’re away and I get to spend some nice time with friends and some time with my family too, rain or shine it’s going to be a good week :).

I didn’t get downstairs until nearly 10am this morning but for once it wasn’t because I was languishing in bed, I was sorting through the wardrobe getting stuff out for camp and trying to find this very expensive stuff I bought for the first Kessingland which you paint on over make up and it turns it waterproof. Yes I know 😳 which is probably why I’ve never actually used it but thought I’d take it with us this time and got a real bee in my bonnet about it when I couldn’t find it. It did turn up in the end, it had fallen behind the cupboard in the bathroom so I needn’t have gone through the wardrobes at all but it was a job well done. Then I put away all the clean washing with the children ‘helping’ (why is it so difficult to carry a neatly folded pile of clothes from one room to another and get them put into a drawer without screwing them all up in the process? :roll:) and then we came downstairs.

They got dressed, ate breakfast and lolled around infront of Class TV, it was Watch this morning and lots of it was about religion so that started some conversations about Heaven and Hell and God and Jesus including Davies saying:
D: so God is in charge of Heaven isn’t He?
Me: Ye-es
D: so who is in charge of Hell then?
Me: the devil
D: so Jesus was God’s son?
Me: yep
D: so who is the devil’s son then?

Various answers sprang to mind 😉 but I explained that little has been written about the life and times of the devil and that seemed to suffice. There was also some talk about earthly bodies and heavenly bodies and why it is only our soul that would go to Heaven. I tend to let them decide for themselves about such things on the basis that I have no belief at all and if they are going to develop one of their own, then it should be just that – their own. Surely there is no right and wrong in their interpretation and if they are going to ‘find’ something then it needs to be on their terms and fit what they want it to – for now at least.

I left them to it and went to saw up some more pallets but Dad had left me a very crappy saw – I demonstrated to Davies how crappy by sawing on my hand with it without it leaving a mark and explained that with good tools the hard work is done by the tools with you guiding them but with crappy tools you are the one putting all the effort in. I did lots of working out angles and drawing lines to be cut when Dad arrived with a decent saw and removing rusty nails before giving up and deciding I needed something indulgent to reward myself for a long hard week. So we made some scones to have with our home made strawberry jam. 🙂 While they were cooking we walked round to the local shop for some cream to have with them. As we went we were discussing when Davies might be able to go to the shop on his own. It would mean crossing one very quiet road which he could do infront of our house and then going round two corners (the shop is on the same block as our house, just the parallel road to ours). Surprisingly, as Davies historically has been loathe to take any independance, he was really up for it and keen to do it right now. We decided he would need to be a bit better with money first – able to know what money to give and get change etc. He was quite adamant he is able to do this now, demonstrating it by pointing out price tickets he knew and telling me there is 100 pennies in one pound and that 8 pence is four 2 pence pieces etc. I think the time for pocket money is nigh and equally the motivation to control it and be able to go to the shop to spend it might well prove his maths trigger :). Have decided to give them both ‘holiday money’ for next week to spend as they so wish and today he bought sweets for him and Scarlett at the shop too. Very excited about this next phase of growing up for him, only this weekend we were talking about when he’d be ready to learn how to make cups of tea but he’s still too short to manage that without standing on stools, which I’m not keen on the idea of with boiling water involved – hurry up and grow Davies! 😆

We came home, Davies whipped the cream for me and we all had scones with jam and cream for lunch which was gorgeous and did some henna body painting, which we then all washed off too early so it’s already fading but at least I’m getting the practise in. Then we were off to the PYO farm for some fruit picking. We met Lucy and The Rs there and Julie, Jack and Maisie joined us after a short while (or as Davies very specifically answered when they arrived and Julie said ‘have you been here long?’ 15 minutes! He was actually about right too and I should probably start assuming that every similar incidence is a fluke rather than a genuine understanding of how long ‘about 15 minutes’ is which he probably has). We picked peas and strawberries, but in modest amounts as last year we went fruit picking a couple of days before Kessingland and came home with tons of stuff I had to give to my parents as we were going away. I got enough strawberries to finish up with the scones and some peas to eat raw tomorrow, or even bring with us as a present for Alison ;).

The children all love it there and they had a whale of a time, they made friends with two other children and Davies, Scarlett, Jack and Maisie befriended a young couple with a small toddler too, chatting away to them at the other end of the field. Then we hopped on the tractor that goes round the crop fields for a ride round the circuit, with the children talking to everyone on the tractor. We pulled in at the start and as it was quite pleasant Julie and I and our four children stayed on while Lucy and The Rs hopped off and we went round again. 🙂 Scarlett’s shoe (pretend crocs) had broken a rivet again so on the spur of the moment we dashed into Rustington to get a new pair for her which come complete with a set of jibbitz which you can use to fix instead of rivets – so fixing her pink shoes and getting her another new pair for just £5.99. I parked right outside and as she’d already requested ‘orange like Davies’ I dashed in, leaving them in the car to grab a pair – and found Lucy and The Rs in there crocs-a-like purchasing too :). Dashed back out again and home in time to meet my Dad at 4pm.

The children played in the garden while we built our chicken coop. It is far from perfect and certainly not a work of art or even much to be proud of but we were working with the crappest wood – dismantled pallets which were rotten in places, riddled with nails and very rough and ready. It has made me long for money to buy decent timber and do it properly as my design worked fine and is totally suitable – might take some pics tomorrow if I get time. It’s butted up to the run we built which we’ve made a hole in to allow them to be in and out of the coop and run during the day and then herded into the coop at night with a door coming down to keep them in. It took until nearly 8pm by which time we’d both had enough. Ady had come home and fed and bathed the childen. Dad left and I remembered we’d run out of cat food so had to pop to Sainsburys to get some so that cat would stop mithering us, then home for a bath and cooking dinner while Ady did various outdoory things.

We started doing a mental checklist of all the stuff for camping and realised we don’t know where the airbed it. We have 3 potential places we’re thinking it might be – cupboard under the stairs, garage or loft space in Davies’ bedroom so that’s tomorrow morning’s job. We also need to pack up all our clothes into a folding crate each and then we’re pretty much ready to go. Ady is loading the car up tomorrow night, I’m working Saturday morning and then Ady and the children are collecting me from work and we’re off at 1pm. In honour of camping holidays and the chicks spending their first night outside it has been pouring with rain for about 2 hours. I’m off to bed now having genuinely felt that today deserved it’s Longest Day title this year. 🙂

Another training day today, at Worthing again. This morning was all a bit of a flurry as I didn’t come downstairs until about 815am and then was rallying D&S to eat breakfast and get dressed so I didn’t actually get to drink the tea I’d made before Ady came home to take me into Worthing. Parking is a nightmare, expensive and a 10 minutes walk to the library anyway for long stay so it was far easier for him to pop back home after an early meeting at work and drop me off before heading off for his next meeting.

It did mean I was nearly half an hour early for the training though, so I went into the library and had 15 minutes on the computer in there while I waited. 🙂 I did the same at lunchtime and again after the training while waiting for Ady to collect me, another fab benefit of working for the library is free internet access subscription. 🙂

The training was all very interesting, but it is still very difficult to sit in a room with one person dishing out information while you try and concentrate on taking it in and storing it in your brain, makes me wonder how on earth I coped at school with it for six hours a day five days a week! It so isn’t the right way to ‘learn’ anything is it? You need to be engaged with it, find it relevant, interesting, something you actually want to know rather than something you ‘should’ know. When I think of how easily I grasp learning something I can either see a point to, need to know for a specific reason or am passionate about compared to how diffficult it is to soak up knowledge that is just chucked at me while I try and cram it in my brain it really does cement for me how we approach Home Education with Davies and Scarlett. They are just the same – something that is the answer to a question they have asked, or information to help them achieve something they want to, or is relevant to what’s happening right now or simply will enable or empower them goes in so easily, the instant I try and ‘teach’ them something or change from what they want to know to what I think they should know they just switch off and it becomes ‘work’. I don’t recall whether I ever did post my musings about learning styles that I was thinking about a while back but it’s been very interesting to watch the different tactics to soaking up knowledge that the children have and indeed what has worked for Ady while he’s been doing studying this year too. They all have very different ways to approach the challenge using different aids to assist.

So this morning was all about Reference, Information and Enquiries and was very interesting in parts. Doing this training has made me realise how different my own personal view to library services is compared to the public as a whole. I’ve always used libraries, although I slacked off in recent years when I started buying books rather than borrowing them, but it was always almost exclusively to borrow books or find a quiet, warm, dry haven to read in. I’ve never asked an enqiry there ever I don’t think and tbh it wouldn’t have occured to me to consider the library as a place to get information other than what I could dig out of the books held there myself. But it would seem that for many people it would be a first port of call for any sort of information and whilst they are being challenged by the internet and specifically search engines like google in this information giving service role there is still a big call for it to the tune of having a positive army of staff dedicated to it throughout the library service in West Sussex. We ended the morning with a tour of Worthing library with it’s massive reference section including about 40 computers, a massive area for family history including subscribed pcs for online services in geneology, a huge area for reading the many papers and magazines they have, lending books on the ground floor and the hub of the whole operation in the basement including loads of reserves of last copies of books in the county which are all stored away for reference. Some really interesting things stashed in there on the basis they may well have historical reference value some day in the future eg. a little pocket book guide of events happening to mark the year 2000 which would have seemed out of date in 2001 but actually come 2050 might well be a really interesting historical record.

We broke for lunch and I walked into town in the sunshine. I realised recently that Scarlett is currently wearing bigger pjs than Davies – he is still in very worn age4-5 ones which are halfway up his legs and looking very tired, while she has several new sets in age 5-6 years on the basis she can get two years out of them. So on the same frugal mindset I bought him 3 pairs of age 7-8 years. They are slightly on the roomy side but pass the ‘do they fall down when you jump up and down in them?’ test so that’s good :). I’ve even been using old pjs (which are no good for ebaying) as rags for cleaning (well I don’t do the cleaning obviously, but I put the pjs in the cupboard under the sink for the person who does do the cleaning 😉 ) so I truly am doing well in the frugal housemanagement stakes ;). Then I wandered back to the library and had another 15 minutes online.

This afternoon was interesting, we were set up on pcs and given a load of cards with questions a customer might come in and ask and we had to find the answers using the online subscriptions services the library uses. Previously I would simply have googled but actually that can be very time consuming for a general enquiry (a 14 year old needs help with their RE homework about Jesus Christ, give them an overview of his life and work) and of course not necessarily accurate or credible depending on the resource you use. West Sussex subscribes to all the Brittanica online encyclopedias, the Oxford Dictionaries and loads more similar sites, all neatly catalogued into subjects and age appropriate groupings. It was really interesting and I will definitely be making use of some of it from home for when the children ask me questions as you can access it via the library website using your library ticket number. We spent about 90 minutes doing that and then came back down to the basement for training on data protection and copyright while we had coffee.

The data protection and copyright stuff was very interesting, not least because I was asking (with my own agenda in place of course 😉 ) about information sharing across council departments and how much information gets cross referenced. Currently it would only be cross referenced if someone paid their £9 and got all the details held on them collated and sent to them but there are long term future plans afoot to create a backbone of cross referenced details allocating all WSCC residents their own reference number and tying up all their details from all agencies. Apparently WSCC is a frontrunner in installing this sort of technology and no other county councils are planning it at the moment and they were quick to assure me it would be accessed only at very high levels but personally I find that quite horrifying. I’m undergoing some sort of change in my feelings and views about the law, rights and the amount we are dictated to currently, with all sorts of tendancies towards anarchy coming out in me. I’ve no idea where it will end up but its been very interesting in a few recent real life and online discussions and situations to realise my once very closely held views on things have changed quite dramatically. I managed to hide all that though as clearly it was neither the time or the place to go slating such ideas ;). The training was wrapped up earlier than expected so when I rang Ady to check where he was he was still at the office an hour or so away from me. Retrospectively I should have walked home at that point as I was over half way home when he caught me up an hour later, having gone back into the library for another half hour online but I did more than enough walking today overall, to the point that the damaged toe is rather swollen today although it’s only really hurting now with direct pressure on it rather than a constant ache.

We got home and had a very quick turnaround of getting Davies ready for Badgers, the house licked into some state of tidyness, a card written for my Granny (both children signed their names) and a present wrapped up for her. We dropped Davies at Badgers and then walked with Scarlett into town to Waitrose to get a cake and then back along the beach to collect Davies. Then we went to my Granny’s house which is just down the road from Badgers where Mum and Dad were already waiting to have 90 minutes with her tonight for her birthday tomorrow. Mum is busy doing something to do with work tomorrow and although I am not actually working (I should be, but I had enough time owing to be given the day off as I have had all the training this week and am working Saturday morning) I have lots to get done in the next couple of days. It was pleasant enough round there and the children were really well behaved and I was really proud of them :).

We came home about 830pm, I sorted the chicks out, the children took themselves off to bed and Ady cooked dinner, but we didn’t eat until 1030pm. We watched an interesting programe on BBC3 about being ginger with Little Cook Small from Big Cook Little Cook. Ady sat there amazed as I reeled off the list of names I got called at school before they listed them on the programme and although it deduced that ginger men do worse than ginger women, which I would agree with, it did open Ady’s eyes at least to the fact that being ginger is something that imediately marks you out as different from other people and effects the way you are treated and therefore the way you act. I wouldn’t say I was bullied particularly for being ginger but I was always aware I was physically different and it was something remarked on from as early as I can remember as a child. Every time I go to a hairdressers I get at least one comment on my hair colour and now in my current phase of enjoying being different I am quite happy with my hair I am still aware that it is my biggest defining physical feature and gives people an expectation of my temprament before they even know me (which I appreciate is the case with blondes and even brunettes to a point but perhaps because those hair colours are more common – and less often natural – it is diluted more). Anyway, an interesting programme.

Yesterday was a slow start day with me caught up in online stuff while the children played. Davies X boxed but played about 4 different games rather than staying infront of the same one for hours and Scarlett played some elaborate game with soft toys and plastic animals. I did do a load of washing and put loads more away though and deal with the chicks, who are looking less chick-like daily.

Scarlett and I did some baking, we made some cheese scones for lunch. We were planning on doing more but ran out of time. We had the cheese scones with butter (yum) and then got ready to go out. We had an interesting conversation in the car about eating meat. Scarlett had found a chicken bone and identified it as a chicken and was concerned it was from one of the chicks. I explained it was from our roast chicken dinner the night before which led onto eating animals generally and whether it was sad or not. I explained that most of the animals we eat are bred specifically to be killed to be eaten so probably wouldn’t be born in the first place if not in order to be eaten eventually and we talked about the fact that we attempt to only eat meat that we are assured of having lived in good conditions. We also talked about the food chain generally and how we are ‘supposed’ to eat meat and are designed to be omnivors. We also talked about different creatures and whether they are herbivores, omnivores or carnivores and how their design shows us that (something they are familar with from dinosaurs – four legged walkers, big, long necks and long legs means they eat plants, two legged walkers, with sharp teeth, smaller bodies etc.). We then discussed people we know who are vegetarian and vegan, and why someone we know (mentioning no names) is a crap vegan because they eat things like honey and milk chocolate ;). There is a display of animals jaws showing how they differ depending on their diet at a park that is fairly local, we must try and get there again soon as I think it would interest them both given the conversation about it all.

I was off to Worthing library for training and D&S were off to my Dad’s for the afternoon. We stayed in my car and Dad dropped me off (no parking at the library and parking in Worthing town centre is an expensive nightmare) which led to an interesting dilemma for him when the children wanted to know why he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, resulting in them all deciding he was silly – him included 😆

The training was ok, all stuff I’ve already covered working in the branch tbh but interesting to meet other people from other branches more than anything, it was training about equal access services, so things like our schemes for delivering books to residential homes, housebound readers, items for visually impaired borrowers and hearing impaired readers, making libraries accessible for disabled borrowers generally and a bit about the library service we run at Ford prison. There were some interesting statistics given such as only 4% of visually impaired or blind people can read braille. I’m there again all day tomorrow for information services which should be interesting as it will help with training to get me ready to man the enquiry desk which I’m keen to do as it’s more varied (and you get to sit down 😉 ).

Ady came and picked me up and we went back to Dad’s to collect the children. Home for a speedy tea before Davies went off to Beavers and Scarlett had a very long bath on her own. When I collected Davies from Beavers there was a big card they’d made to send to Shoreham airport to say thank you for their recent visit. All the boys had drawn a picture of something from the airport (so that’d be planes, mainly) and they’d stuck them all inside. Some of them weren’t named, and they varied loads in terms of how they drew / coloured in etc. but Davies’, although unsigned was instantly recognisable, and really good :). I dropped Davies back home for his bath and headed back out to go and get some pallets to make a chicken coop from the industrial estate. I found a load piled up outside the unit I’d got them from before, so that was good cos he’d already told me to ‘help myself’ last time. I brought 5 home and toiled over dismantling one with a hammer and screwdriver before giving up at about 830pm when I decided it was getting a bit late for making so much noise.

Ady and I watched Hot Fuzz, well Ady watched it, I fell asleep on the sofa so went to bed at about 1130pm before the end of it.

Today has been super productive, helped no doubt by me being driven by anger at an online spat which I (very admirably I think!) walked away from although I feel inclined to rant about lengthily I won’t. We went to Tesco’s first thing, where we got various bits and pieces including 4 cheap collapsible crates for our clothes at kessingland and some preserving sugar for making jam from all the strawberries going yucky in the chiller from the PYO last week and bits for dinner this week as we seem to have been left with five portions of chicken breast and nothing else due to messing about with the menu this month a lot. I also got the children a new water pistol each (Tesco own 87 pence each) for camp. They were really well behaved all the way round, playing with the water pistols and being quite helpful until we got to the checkout where they helped load all the shopping on the conveyer belt. The cashier looked at them both and said to me ‘No school today then?’ to which I replied ‘No, they don’t go to school, they’re Home Educated’ which they took as their cue to act like lunatics for five minutes hence being a great advertisement for HE – not 🙄

Home again and I pegged out all the washing (four loads, all the dirty washing in the house, and it all dried before the storm started today, hurrah 🙂 ) before Lucy dropped Rebecca off to play for a while. I’d planned to do baking with them but they disappeared straight off to play so I waited until Lucy arrived and then made cheese scones with the girls and snickerdoodles with Davies. All of which got eaten this afternoon – best sort of baking, in place of other food and not kicking around for ages afterwards. Dad arrived shortly after Lucy, followed by Ady popping in between stores, so it was all a bit hectic here for a while until Ady went off again, Dad went outside to start pallet dismantling (found it was far quicking with a crowbar / wrench) and we kicked the kids into the garden so Lucy and I could have half an hours chatting. Lucy and the Rs left, Davies and Scarlett came back inside to play (although they spent most of the time hanging out the lounge window ‘supervising’ Dad and I with Scarlett asking helpful questions like ‘Mummy and Grandad, what the heck are you doing?!’ :lol:.

We’ve made some headway with the coop – it is rather rough and ready and unlikely to be the finished item tbh, Ady is on the case to get a very cheap damaged shed from B&Q next time one comes up and I’ll keep looking out for suitable wood on freecycle, but for now, particularly until we know how many chickens we’ll actually be keeping we’re fashioning an extension of the run we built, triangular with a door, so that Dad can herd them in and out fairly easily next week when he’s here chick and cat minding while we’re at camp. The design is mine again, with Dad providing the brute strength and the power tools and we got the two sides built today. Dad has some wood for the floor and door at home so I’ll be cutting the rest of the wood to size for the front and back over the next 2 days and then we’ll get it completed either Thursday or Friday.

Dad left, Ady came home, I fed the kids and then spent hours in the kitchen making strawberry jam and dinner, while Ady brought the chicks in and tidied the house and he children went to bed. Strawberry jam has come out really well – I got three jam jars full from our leftover strawberries which were only otherwise fit for the bin really (probably no more than about £2.50 worth from the PYO) and a £1 bag of preserving sugar, so cheaper than posh branded jam and loads nicer :). Thinking of other recipes I can try out maybe in D&S decorated jars as gifts for family at Christmas / birthdays, must start collecting screw top jars.

Fell asleep on the sofa again last night so didn’t blog. 😳

Nice day yesterday, I got up with D&S and we made fathers day cards for Ady. Very mad trying to get them to write at the same time as D knows letters and can do a lot of the spelling himself whereas S only knows a few letters and so I have to write some of them down on a seperate sheet of paper for her, so trying to combine agreeing that yes ‘A’ should come next after ‘H’ and why there is a double P in happy with Davies at the same time as showing Scarlett what L looks like and agreeing that yes there is one of those in her name pushes even the most talented multi-tasker to her limits ;). We had a hurried breakfast, Ady got given his cards, chocolates and dvd and then we were off to swimming.

Ady and Scarlett went for a walk along the beach while I sat and watched Davies. He is probably the most behind in the group now, but at the same time as not progressing at the rate of the rest of the class he is clearly progressing within himself, and most of all really enjoying it so that’s good. Yesterday he really mastered going right under the water and the look on his face when he realised not only could he do it but he actually enjoyed it was lovely to witness (and impressive to me as I still hate going under water :oops:). He does have more than a bit of a Frank Spencer element to him when he’s trying to do something sporty though and he was quite comical trying to hold a float in both arm and get his legs up to kick. He was getting them up and kicking but going nowhere with lots of splasing – just like when we was learning to crawl on the floor actually and mastered moving backwards way before he started going forwards – he was also late to walk, I wonder if that follows through in all phyiscal things somehow? He kept losing one float, then letting go of the other one to go after the first one, grabbing it and turning round to find the second one had floated off, so he let go of the first one to go after that one and so on. Meanwhile the rest of the class carried on around him while he was still in the middle of the pool doing his comedy float routine. 😆 I think the lessons are a good thing and will definitely carry on with them, but I’m hoping he makes some leaps and bounds of progress next week at Kessingland with lots of swimming and lots of attention one to one on him.

We left there and the torrential rain that had been falling since the early hours of the morning had finally stopped so we headed off to the local car boot sale. It was pretty quiet – both buyers and sellers but we got a few bargains including HP3 on video, a HP broomstick for 20p and a HP figure for a quid. Scarlett got a load of plastic cats and dogs for 20p and I got a body art kit with a load of tattoo pens for 40p which will supplement the henna I’ve got and having been practising on myself have realised will actually only be suitable for the older children anyway given how long it needs to dry.

We popped home to put the chicks out for the day and collect my Dad’s Fathers Day present and then back to my parents for the afternoon. We had lunch, my Granny came for a couple of hours, my Mum cut a load more off my hair as I’d decided it wasn’t short enough (it’s definitely short now 🙂 ) and the children played while Dad and Ady watched cricket. Frazer came home from work just after 5pm so we stayed another hour or so to catch up with him before Scarlett started to fade fast (she’s now also got the cold) so we came home for an early night for them.

Dad and I made some plans for a chicken house which hopefully we’ll get sorted this week sometime but he’s pricing up wood as he reckons recycled pallets (the only wood within our budget 😉 ) are too much hassle, so hopefully he’s got that sorted this morning. I’m off to work this afternoon (another training session at Worthing library) and I’m dropping D&S off at Dad’s on the way. I’ve promised to do some baking with S so I need to get off and do that now as we’re leaving here in an hour, so we better bake something suitable for lunch.

Sung to the tune of Kaiser Chiefs Ruby. Just because we’ve all been singing that all day today. We had it on in the car and then Julie put Kaiser Chiefs cd on at their house and later we were in the garden with all four children in the playhouse and realised they were all singing a little chorus of it – very cute and funny :). So we’ve been singing everything to that tune today ‘do you, do you want a sausage? Ah ah ah ah ah’.

I’ve realised this afternoon that it is actually 16th June today, not 17th. No idea where I got the dates muddled but I thought it was 15th June on Thursday, was writing 16th June on everything at work yesterday (luckily books get date stamped rather than written in otherwise everyone would be bringing their books back late in 3 weeks :oops:) and thought it was our 14th anniversary today – which actually it isn’t until tomorrow :oops:, so thanks for anniversary wishes and twitters, will read them all again tomorrow :).

I was reading my diary entry for 17th June 1993 earlier today, the day Ady and I got together. It’s not suitable for copying here but suffice to say everything I gushed about back then still holds true today – and more. There’s another entry about 3 weeks afterwards talking about how Ady and I have talked about getting married and having babies one day, we were always serious from day one really. We’ve proved a lot of people who knew us back then wrong by still being together 14 years later, indeed married and indeed with babies. We’ve been through a fair bit together, faced a lot of challenges and had a lot of adventures. Our relationship remains the thing I am probably most proud of in my life, the constant I can always rely on and in reading my own words from 14 years ago I recall sitting there knowing this was for keeps even then.

I had a rough night’s sleep last night, waking with the birds at about 4am and struggling to get back to sleep again thanks to their noise. Made me think twice about cockerels I can tell you ;). So I really cut it fine getting up this morning, getting out of bed, dressed, kids dressed, everyone in the car, me dropped off and sitting in the hairdressers chair within 20 minutes :). As a last minute decision as I walked into the hairdressers I had a fair bit chopped off, it looks really nice and I’m pleased with it, bit odd to feel breeze on my neck though :).

Ady and the children came and picked me up and we came home and got all the camping stuff together ready for next week stacked up in the garage. The children were really helpful, going and getting and things together, loading boxes up and so on. They are really excited about camp specifically and camping generally. And with a weekend we’ve planned with Chris and Julie today we have 4 camping trips already booked up ready for the summer. 🙂

This afternoon we’ve been over to Chris and Julie’s for a barbecue. It’s Chris’ birthday on Monday so we also had chocolate cake (contraband foodstuff in the normal way over there 😉 ). It was a lovely afternoon actually, lots of music, singing, chatting, playing, drawing and lovely food. We left there just in time to get home for Doctor Who, Scarlett tolerated about half of if before deciding she really didn’t like the pointy teeth future beings and heading off to bed. Davies watched it and I drooled over Captain Jack and I’m now drooling over James Nesbitt in Jekyll and Hyde.

I worked, it was fine.

Mum was here this morning, Dad was here this afternoon, Ady was home by the time I got back from work. I’ve worked too much this week, missed my babies and not enjoyed the too wide variety of childcare that has been necessary.

Davies has come down with a streaming cold. If one of us had to go down with something I guess this is in plenty of time for us all getting it and being over it by Kessingland, but it’s shite timing with me feeling I’ve not been around enough this week to come home to him huddled up in a blanket tonight. He is really suffering with tics and twitches atm too, which I have put down to tiredness but can’t pretend doesn’t worry me on some level as to whether there is a deeper issue.

I brought home presents for all tonight, I’ve earned overtime from the extra working so felt inclined to splash out and got Davies a Dr Who model making kit so he now has a dalek, K9, Cyberman and Tardis, Scarlett got a princess jewellry kit and a book mobile and Ady has Hot Fuzz on dvd in honour of fathers day on Sunday and our 14th anniversary tomorrow (expect a sentimental post about that if I have time 😉 ) .

And as I’m the wrong side of a bottle of wine, very tired and have to be at the hairdressers for 9am tomorrow morning I’m off to bed now.

An interesting day today. I had a full day of training sessions. In the morning it was Bibliographic Services training – the department which purchases all books, music, films etc. for West Sussex Libraries, processes them, works with the budgets to decide what to buy, what to replace etc. and then recieves in all the books, gets them ready for borrowing and sends them out to libraries. They also have all donations (and we get a lot of donations of books etc. in, even in Lancing I am aware of tens of books being given to us each week) in from libraries around the county and get them ready for borrowing with date labels, barcodes, entering them onto the system, jacketing them and doing spine labels for non-fiction or genre labels for fiction. Finally they deal with requests from our libraries for books we don’t hold on our own catalogue and want to borrow from other libraries around the country or the British Library, copies of periodicals or articles (I processed an order for one from 1947 today) and incomming requests from other libraries around the country to borrow titles from our catalogue. They also deal with determining whether to spend money on getting titles from around the county (it costs to borrow from other counties libraries) or to invest in buying that book ourselves.

It was actually a really interesting training session, although I am staggered at several things every time I attend training. One is how contradictory the training programme is – on the one hand they invest a lot in training – every member of new staff attends 8 training sessions (full day courses) in libraries around the county, so that includes freeing them up from the business or paying them to work on their days off, covering expenses for travelling, taking the trainer out of the business for the day and we also have pre-training discussions with senior staff at our branch and then a debrief after the training. They have IIP (Investors In People) accreditation, which requires that sort of level of training and is very commendable, yet when it comes down to it the actual quality of the training is poor. Many of the staff within the library service are classic library service staff, without wishing to be critical the stereotypical library worker very much exists closeted away within high up positions in the West Sussex library service. They are shy, unassuming, unable to project or come across with passion, zest or enthusiasm. They are all excellent at their day to day job, but not much cop at training. The other thing, which I now have proper statistics for is the proportionately very small numbers of support staff in offices compared to the larger numbers of staff out in libraries, but more on that later.

So the training was interesting subject matter, rather tediously presented. We did get very nice chocolate biscuits at break time though :). Next we had a practical hands on session which was good, where we got to actually put new books and donated books onto the system. I ended up being shown how to do this by the only man working in the office who I had been prewarned about as having a very bad stammer. He was utterly charming, very chatty and took ages to get every sentence out. I was torn between finishing sentences for him, smiling encouragingly as he struggled to get words out and looking away pretending not to notice. I worked with someone with an even worse stammer once, who was very open about how he struggled with it and the coping mechanisms he used, some of which I recognised this guy putting into practice. We muddled through though and ended up managing a little chat at the end with him asking me questions and me giving long answers.

Then it was lunchtime. Ady and the children had brought me over to Chichester (where the training was) and were coming to collect me again at the end, so I had to walk from one end of the city centre to the other where the afternoon session was being held. I could have got a lift with one of the people who was driving but would have felt obliged to stay with her for lunch too then and I couldn’t afford the pub lunch she was planning. So instead I had a lovely leisurely walk through Chichester, got a drink and sandwich and sat on a low wall to eat it watching the world go by and then headed to the next office (above the registry office, so very prettily the doorstep was decorated with confetti) for the afternoon session.

This was equally interesting and equally poorly executed really, we were given loads of statistics, about the standards that libraries should be meeting, about how WSCC receives the lowest budget from central government, what our budget is and how it is spent, how we are performing generally and plans for the future. The guy running the session is the Business Performance Manager which is a line of work I’ve always thought would be very interesting, and indeed could see being a really good role to have. I like going to these training courses and meeting the sort of people who are doing the kind of job I might aspire to have in 10 years or so when I am in a position to work ‘properly’ again – funny to think in a different life I’d be starting to think about that now with Scarlett due to start full time school in September.

The afternoon finished earlier than scheduled so I walked back through the city centre to meet Ady and the children, we went to McDonalds for them to have their tea and then came home via the farm where the chicks parents live (where Ady got the eggs) so we could see what they might look like when fully grown. If you’ve been looking at their recent pictures on flickr it won’t surprise you the answer to that is ‘huge!’.

The children had watched Night at the Museum with Ady, played loads outside, made some sort of first aid centre (it’s their current passion, first aid) and generally had a good day at home with Daddy. I spoke to them both on the phone at lunchtime, but when Ady is looking after them I don’t give them a great deal of thought in terms of worrying about them through the day which always makes it easier to focus on work.

We got home and I cleaned the chicks brooder out and moved them into the garage for the night – their first night outside. Someone on my chicken forum floored me yesterday by suggesting they all looked like cockerels from the most recent pictures so I’m very disinclined to build anything else until I know whether I’ve got any hens or not. They seem pretty happily settled in the garage tonight anyway so the house doesn’t stink any more which is a definite plus.